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It's a stunning, pristine offshore natural jewel, miles from the nearest human presence in an otherwise densely populated region and located just inside Canada's border in the middle of Lake Erie's western basin.

And this 9.5-acre (3.8-hectare) beauty — sitting at the same latitude as Northern California and described by one rare visitor as "almost-Caribbean" — can be yours for the price of an average two-bedroom downtown condo in Vancouver.

"Who do you know who owns an island? You could throw a party and tell your closest 100 friends, 'Come to my island,'" said Goran Todorovic, a Windsor, Ont., broker with Re/Max Preferred Realty.

"It's a very private island at a price so cheap it's ridiculous — if this were the West Coast, it would cost millions."

Middle Sister Island, the most remote among the nine islands that constitute the Canadian portion of the Lake Erie Archipelago, is one of the last privately owned islands of its size in this corner of the Great Lakes that remains in a natural and undisturbed state. There is a long, wide beach of smooth cobblestones along its western flank, glacial grooves from the last Ice Age on exposed limestone bedrock and towering Kentucky coffee trees among the rare Carolinian species that fill the island's interior.

The island is rich in history. Following the British navy's crushing defeat in the Battle of Lake Erie fought nearby on Sept. 13, 1813, it became a staging area for the American army prior to its invasion of Canada, a foray led by future U.S. president William Henry Harrison which saw the death of legendary Shawnee chief Tecumseh in the Battle of the Thames.

Owned since about 1990 by a wealthy Ohio industrialist, Middle Sister Island was put up for auction in Cleveland in 2000 but there were no takers for the minimum asking price of US$400,000.

While hinting that the asking price may soon drop, Todorovic said the island is worth a lot more now than in 2000 and that, as a Canadian island offered only to American buyers, "it wasn't exposed to the market properly" at that earlier auction. He sees the property as the perfect location for "a personal getaway," an executive retreat or as a potential location for a development such as marina with bar to attract boating tourists.

"Boaters are always looking for somewhere to go . . . this area is a boating capital," said Todorovic.

Any talk of the island's commercial potential has some cringing.

"We wouldn't want to see it developed . . . it's part of the western Lake Erie islands that we have an interest in seeing protected," said Wendy Cridland, a program manager with the Nature Conservancy of Canada. The NCC is a leading private, non-profit group that partners with corporate and individual landowners to secure ecologically important lands through donations, conservation agreements or outright purchases.

Putting Middle Sister Island on the marketplace has been "on our radar," said Cridland, but her organization "is just not in a position right now" to consider getting involved.

Over the past five years, the NCC has been acquiring and managing ecologically sensitive lands on Pelee Island, and it now owns 1,000 acres, or about 10 per cent, of the biggest Canadian island in the area. In 1999, the NCC purchased the nearby 18-hectare Middle Island, Canada's southernmost territory, for $1.3 million before turning it over to Parks Canada for inclusion in Point Pelee National Park.

Cridland said Middle Sister's remoteness is an issue, but so too is the presence of a sizable colony of double-crested cormorants. It's a species covered under the international Migratory Bird Protection Act but whose resurgent numbers are being blamed by biologists for endangering already threatened Great Lakes native plant and wildlife communities.

On a tour this week of Middle Sister, located about nine kilometres south of Colchester Harbour, visitors were bombarded by excrement and vomited fish being dropped by some of the thousands of cormorants hunkered down in hundreds of nests in trees covered in acidic guano.

Government authorities on both sides of the border, including Parks Canada on Middle Island, are in the midst of culling the Lake Erie western basin's cormorants. Last year, about 3,300 cormorants were killed on Middle Island, while 2,433 breeding pairs were destroyed by the Americans on West Sister Island, located in Ohio waters between Middle Sister Island and the U.S. mainland.

Middle Sister has not yet been targeted by the culls, which can only be approved by the federal government, but those that are proceeding have been controversial and expensive.

"The cormorants would be something we'd want to address . . . to maintain the existing biodiversity values," said Cridland of the NCC.

The bird issue aside, development of any kind would be challenging on Middle Sister Island, which is part of a Township of Pelee environmental protection zone and designated as natural environment in the current local official plan.

Just building a cottage would be "extremely" difficult, said Tim Byrne of the Essex Region Conservation Authority. Referring to more than 100 plant species, including 21 rare varieties, ERCA designated Middle Sister Island as an "environmentally significant area" in 1994.

"There's precious little natural area left within the region . . . development would be contrary to existing zoning," said Byrne.

He said any rezoning application would have to be screened and approved by ERCA, the township and provincial environmental authorities.

"It is a very, very interesting and significant piece of property," said Byrne, adding the island stands out in the region for its complete lack of previous human habitation, save for the occasional shipwreck survivor.

The current owner has been making queries on a potential sale to public authorities.

MP Jeff Watson (C - Essex) said the western basin's archipelago has "some real environmental value" and that, while previously approached by Middle Sister's owner, Parks Canada declined to make the purchase on Ottawa's behalf.

But with the island again being actively marketed, Watson said Friday he'll be going back to the federal agency to see where the issue stands.

Given its history and connection to the War of 1812, Watson said he'll also be contacting Heritage Canada as another potential island suitor.

The Ontario government, which acquired the 15-hectare East Sister Island from an Ohio owner in 1976 and subsequently turned it into a nature reserve, is another possible buyer. But public ownership isn't essential to environmental preservation, said Watson, pointing to Middle Sister's long existence in private hands.

"It should be owned by a Canadian — it's Canadian property," said Todorovic, adding the island's current owner "bought it for development."

And despite its current protective zoning, "it's like anything, you can get it rezoned," said the realtor.

Windsor Star

dschmidtwindsorstar.com

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